Monday, August 29, 2011

"A Boy Named Sue" Revisited

"My name is Sue. How do you do? NOW YOU GONNA DIE!"

This is the second old piece to get a facelift and is based on the Johnny Cash song of the same name. As a side note, I just learned the other day that the song was written for Cash by Shel Silverstein. Am I the only one amazed by that?


You can check out the old version of the piece HERE


4 comments:

Erik Johnson Illustrator said...

Definately more "directional" with the titled glass (with more visible cracks) in addition to the discarded shot glass and wilted ciggy (perhaps it could use a fading smoke trail or some dying embers?) and the scowling looking back at the bar room helps make it look more dynamic.

The faces are also easier to read thanks to lighter colors.

Also, I never noticed before, but Sue kinda looks like Liev Schreiber.

So what did you do exactly, just draw a new "Sue" face in Photoshop? I ask because aside of coloring, the background looks the same.

Dave Armstrong said...

Actually, the entire thing is redrawn. The main reason I did this was because the old piece's line quality looked terrible when printed, so all the original linework got scrapped.

I liked the faces on the background guys, so they're not drastically different, but if you look, you can see they're a lot more detailed now.

Jake Murray said...

Looks really good man. I'm glad you didn't change the background guys' faces too much - those are classic. Haha, "A Boy Named Sue" totally sounds like it could have been a poem in "Where the Sidewalk Ends" now that you mention it.

Chen Li Long said...

Love this! I've always been a fan of the song.